Moist Haunted

Doctor Who

Under The Lake and Before The Flood

Series Nine, Episodes Three and Four

At some point in the last few years, Doctor Who seemingly went off the idea of two-parters.  Once a staple ingredient, they only crop up now and then, often with such a tectonic shift in setting that the episodes are more like cousins than siblings.  (Look at The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, or A Good Man Goes To War and Let's Kill Hitler.  Actually, don't look at the last two, they're a load of balls.)  This year, for whatever reason, you can hardly move for two-parters.  Good-oh: change is healthy.

Speaking of change: the rock theme tune.
It... actually works.
Now can we stop moaning at Hartnell for wishing us a Merry Christmas?

And okay, they're already hit and miss.  (The Magician's Apprentice spent 45 minutes just warming the toilet seat for Part 2.)  But in cases like Under The Lake and Before The Flood, it feels like the writer had a reason to take up two episodes.  This isn't just Base Under Siege, Now With 45 More Minutes.  It's two separate things that work together.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  You see that bit up there, about the Base Under Siege?  Uh huh: we're going there again, and buying another T-shirt.  Make room in your wardrobe.

The TARDIS arrives (somewhat reluctantly) in an underwater base.  The crew are missing, but still nearby – the Doctor figures this out by dipping his finger in a cup of lukewarm tea, which is adorable.  They're being pursued by ghosts, who are killing them off and adding them to their ranks.  It all has something to do with an unidentified spaceship, with untranslatable words scrawled on its walls.

Under The Lake divides into two main chunks: ghosts being creepy and characters discussing the problem.  The ghosts are great, walking silently and spryly after the remaining crew.  It's refreshing to have a quiet baddie with no gnashing teeth.  (I also think the Weeping Angels are at their creepiest when they're not pulling their "GRR" faces.)  They follow strict rules, such as they only come out at night, they can only move metal objects, and they only have it in for you if you've read the words on that spaceship.  The Doctor is blissfully stumped, dismissing the whole idea of ghosts to begin with – because they don't exist, duh – but then coming around to it later on, because he's excited by new things and actually it might be ghosts.  (He dismisses the elephant-in-the-room-y idea that they are actually holograms, because um.)

Sadly, good as they are, there's a point where the ghosts aren't frightening any more.  There are just too many loopholes.  If there's nothing metal around them, they can't hurt you.  Even though they can walk through walls, you can lose them around a corner or by walking briskly.  When they're not trying to kill you, they're apt to stand around doing nothing.  If you can switch on the base's Day Mode, they disappear.  And if you lock them in the base's Faraday Cage, or go in and lock them out, you're safe as houses.  Yes, it sucks that the characters keep dying, but the ghosts themselves just become a point of inconvenience, and later, information-gathering.  This is where the episode's other chunk, the heaps and heaps of talking, comes in.

"It's deadlock sealed, I can't open it."
No, a sonic gadget can't open it.
Why is that the limit of his abilities?

What are ghosts?  Can ghosts exist?  What does the writing mean?  Why can't the TARDIS translate it?  Why doesn't the TARDIS want to be here?  What are the ghosts saying?  What does that mean?  How are the ghosts affecting the base?  Yak, yak, yak.  The characters aren't all that interesting, especially the poor bastard with Evil Capitalist written all over him (along with Next To Die).  Perhaps it's for the best that they spend most of their time listening to the Doctor.  One of them is a fan of his, which feels like a repeat of Osgood.  (Sniff.)  Another is deaf, which is really cool for the deaf community and handily enables the others to understand the ghosts (after about twenty-five minutes when they finally cotton on to lip-reading).  They're all well cast, but their sketchy personalities don't go far, as the script is busy justifying the (barmy) notion behind the ghosts.

The words on the spaceship are co-ordinates.  The ghosts (really sort-of-holograms, I think) are transmitting them out into space.  With every new ghost, the signal gets stronger.  So they want to keep killing people (but only the ones who've seen the words) to make more ghosts.  It's all an insidious plan by the original occupant of the spaceship, who's been waiting nearly 150 years for someone to happen along, read the words and die.  (Or however many someones he randomly needs to get enough signal.)  All this because he apparently does not own (and cannot find) any radio or communication equipment, and couldn't be bothered to skip stasis and just get in the spaceship and go home.  Come on.  Even by Doctor Who standards, that's convoluted.

But this is Toby Whithouse, who you may remember is banzai at writing the Doctor and not so hot on plot, so I guess this is Whithouse As Usual.  At its best, with Capaldi selling the hell out of the dialogue and the ghosts creeping along nicely, Under The Lake is traditional enough that you can almost hear Terrance Dicks novelising it.  At its worst, it's a lot of blether stacked on what looks suspiciously like bollocks.  But there are some really great lines, particularly the one about earworms: "Two weeks of Mysterious Girl by Peter Andre.  I was begging for the brush of death's merciful hand."  The music's creepy.  And the set's quite convincing.  There's mould and everything.

Anyway, it does get interesting, just before it ends.  The base starts flooding (because eh, we're bored of ghosts now) and the Doctor and Clara get separated.  The Doctor, in an uncharacteristic move, decides to go back in time to get some answers.  Then a new ghost appears.  It's the Doctor.

I can't lip-read, but he's probably saying:
"No, of course I haven't died.  God, you're gullible.
But I'll tell you my name.  Lean closer.  It's..."

Hold that thought about "interesting" for a moment, because oi, you: the Doctor's going to die?  Again?  Cool cliff-hanger and everything, but is anyone going to buy that?  Before The Flood honestly seems to think so, launching into a heated emotional conversation between the Doctor and Clara, and this only two weeks after he thought he was going to cop it in The Witch's Familiar.  Guys, enough is enough; you're just crying wolf (or Bad Wolf) at this point.  Newsflash, he doesn't die.  We're not even talking dies-and-finds-a-way-to-reverse-it here.  He's fine, so all those scenes of Capaldi wrestling with time and mortality... well, they're very good, but they're a waste of time.  Worst of all, you've every reason to guess as much going in.  Keep pulling this nonsense and our expectations will only get lower.

For good measure, the Doctor is spurred into action – and possibly even changing history! – because Clara is due to die before him.  And this might be preferable, if she weren't the only other person in Doctor Who currently holding a No Way I'm Gonna Die Card.  For feck's sake, stop making it all about these two dying, especially while other people are actually copping it.  (They do make a point of how those deaths don't seem to matter as much, which says something about the Doctor's aloofness, but then it tacitly adds to the-show-as-a-whole's wonky sense of perspective.  Whoops.)

Anyway, back to "interesting".  The Doctor goes back in time during an adventure.  Despite owning a time machine, he doesn't do that very often.  It's admittedly a bit odd for that very reason – why doesn't he solve all his riddles that way, and why can't he solve this one the usual way, i.e. forwards?  But Whithouse is the guy who, in A Town Called Mercy, suggested bundling everyone into the TARDIS and getting out of there.  (They didn't do it, but it's what we were all thinking.)  If you can think of a good reason to do the undoable, or at least bring it up, then why not?  It is a really cool idea to set Part 1 in the future, and Part 2 beforehand.  And it's really all about paradoxes, so they don't take it for granted.

Ah yes, paradoxes.  Before The Flood opens with the Doctor explaining (to no one in particular) how the Bootstrap Paradox works.  In a nutshell: go back in time and give yourself an idea, which is what inspired you to go back in time and give yourself the idea.  Who came up with the idea?  This is an interesting puzzle, but it's not a new one for Doctor Who.  The most famous example is in (arguably) the most famous episode: in Blink, all of Sally Sparrow's actions are predetermined and cyclical.  It's a teensy bit weird that they're making a song and dance about it now – it's been Steven Moffat 101 for years.  But there's still a natty paradox underneath the hoopla, and it's satisfying to see Parts 1 and 2 circle each other, particular the second time around.

Sarah Jaaaaane!
Also, his guitar amp is from Magpie Electronics.
I like Doctor Who.

Just to add to the fun, Before The Flood paradoxes itself as well, Back To The Future: Part II style: when the TARDIS refuses to go to Clara's rescue (fair enough, old girl), the Doctor and co. must avoid themselves from an hour or so earlier.  There's a danger of disappearing down the rabbit hole here, but it does allow for a quick repeat of the dangers of changing history.  Which are... still quite muddy actually, since Clara tells the Doctor he's going to die, the Doctor tells an undertaker he's going to send evil messages in the future, he's risking changes in the timeline by cavalierly going back in time in the first place, and he seems to consider chucking the whole timeline in the bin just to save Clara.  (Although he might just be joking to distract the bad guy.)

It's all good fodder for Capaldi, who is generally funny, threatening and out-of-step-with-everyone-else here.  Good Doctoring is practically a Toby Whithouse trope; it's a nice one to have!  I love his attitude to the ghosts, i.e. not assuming they're hostile until they try to kill him.  (I like the way he says "Hello!  Did you want to show us this?  It's very nice!" like he's talking to a couple of toddlers.)  I'm not totally sold on his "emotion" cue cards, which veer closer to mental illness than alienness in my book, but at least he's trying, and he's not telling everyone to shut up any more.  (Apart from the stupid ones, who deserve it.)  In general, the Doctor's eccentricity and coolness came off forced in The Magician's Apprentice, but here, it's really working.  And he's not that nice: he sort of lets someone die just to test a theory – boo, you nasty alien, etc. – but then he obviously tries to get her to stay in the TARDIS first.  It's not his fault she goes, and his emotions are clear when she makes her fateful choice.  It's very Doctorly.  I'm sure McCoy would approve.  (See also, sending the bad guy to his death, apparently guilt-free.)

Jenna Coleman fares less well.  It's obvious they're Doing A Thing by comparing her to the Doctor – oh how terrible she has become by learning from him, etc.  This gives us a great bit where the Doctor has to try to keep her safe, and he hates talking like that so it makes him hilariously uncomfortable.  (Gimme a C!  Gimme an A!  Gimme a P!)  But sometimes she's so generic she might as well be her own hologram.  "I want another adventure.  Come on, you feel the same!  You're itching to save a planet, I know it!"  That's actual dialogue, spoken by a person.  She spends most of Before The Flood hanging by her iPhone waiting for the Doctor to check in.  It's eerily like they were expecting a change of actor and deliberately wrote her as generic as possible.  Jenna nearly left at Christmas, right?  But sadly, it's probably just Clara being Clara.

Sniff.  It's just like the old days!

The rest of the cast are fine, but there aren't a lot of standout moments, apart from some not-very-convincing romances thrown in at the end.  Some actors – Colin McFarlane and, most egregiously, Paul Kaye – are one-scene-wonders, not including their anonymous ghost stuff.  Cass, the deaf commanding officer, impresses the most with her (necessarily?) quiet intensity.  A Daredevil moment cringily over-compensates for her disability, but otherwise she's fab.  As for the baddie, a hulking monstrosity voiced by Peter Serafinowicz, The Fisher King doesn't really work.  He talks too much, his plan's a load of hogwash and in the end he falls for an obvious lie.  What a plonker!  As for his look, no doubt awesome in the concept art, the actual costume is more like Revenge Of The Wobbly '80s Throwback.  I'm pretty sure he bumps into a door at one point, the poor rubbery bastard.

There's a lot in these episodes that works, and as an overall package it's satisfying.  If all two parters are to be given as much attention as this, great.  At the same time it's not as clever as it thinks, over-explaining paradoxes, talking too much and significantly failing to surprise.  (No, he doesn't die and yes, you did guess who was in the stasis chamber the moment they unveiled it.  Who else?)  Call it a game of two halves, then.  Or to coin a phrase, a two-parter.

The Curse Of Fatal Davros

Doctor Who
The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar
Series Nine, Episodes One and Two


I wasn't going to bother this year.

I haven't retreated to a monastery to ignore Doctor Who or anything, but I am marginally busier these days and I don't feel much urge to review it any more.  Shrug; plenty of other people do it.  But then I realised I was still watching it and spending just as much time griping about it as ever, so what the hell, eh?  It'll keep my committed band of followers (a dozen people still desperately trying to Google their friend Neil) happy.  You're welcome.

So, as we're all here and Doctor Who is back on, let's pick it to bits.  The Magician's Apprentice.  Grand title, great big plotty ideas, first part of two.  How does it fare?  Short, charitable answer: it's all build up.  Slightly longer and more honest answer: it's a lot of waiting for Part Two to happen.

It begins on a mysterious battlefield.  The Doctor sees a small boy in peril.  What else does he do but try to rescue him?  There's just one snag: his name's Davros.  So, naturally assuming there's only one Davros on the entire planet, the Doctor tucks his tail between his legs and leaves him to the mercy of the handmines (alas, not a typo).  Ages later, apparently in his death throes, Davros (for some reason) suddenly remembers that time the Doctor stitched him up and understandably wants a word.  Cue the Doctor dragging his feet en route to his last meeting with Davros – and apparently, his own death.

"My name's Davros!  Wait, come back!  Dave Ross, I said!"

It's big stuff all right, apart from the handmines, which are as stupid as they are incongruous.  (They don't even work.  Stand absolutely still or they'll get you?  They don't seem to mind Davros shifting his weight, or people talking, or a sonic screwdriver landing with a "plop" next to them.)  But as is often the way with Doctor Who, especially finales which is oddly what this one feels like, even the other comparatively shiny bits don't bear thinking about.

Big Idea #1: the Doctor is sure he's going to die.  This again, though?  The Doctor thought he was going to die in The End Of Time, then he thought he was going to die in The Wedding Of River Song, then he thought he was going to die in The Time Of The Doctor.  We know it's never going to happen, especially in Episode One of twelve, so it's about as dramatic as dropping a balloon to keep doing it.  Even if you fell for it last time, you'd need the wherewithal of a concussed bee to think it might stick this time.  (And if you're not really meant to think it might happen, which would explain how utterly half-hearted it is here, well, why the zarking farktwaddle are they doing it again?)

Big Idea #2: the Doctor is missing.  (On account of not wanting to die, which he totally might.)  This is actually quite impressive for a man who's probably everywhere in the universe simultaneously, but then Missy, Clara and UNIT do a quick timey-wimey Google search and find him instantly.  Phew.  Remind me what all the fuss was about?  (Turns out he was nowhere in time and space, unless you remembered to check Medieval England.  Good old Clara, checking the one bit no one else had looked in for no reason!)

Quick sidenote: there's a noticeable dearth of forward-moving plot in this episode.  It's really just getting us from Point A, he doesn't want to go to Point B, he goes.  But things really grind to a halt in Ye Olde Land.  Here, the Doctor drops some hideous anachronisms and makes some terrible jokes, and Peter Capaldi plays some riffs.  The axe-man cometh and all that (ho ho), but come on, why's this scene actually here, besides meeting the requisite two-part minute count?  Charitable hat on: we're probably meant to look at the Doctor's bizarre behavior and think "Ooh look, he really has lost it, maybe he is going to die this time"?  Clara certainly thinks so, clumsily pointing out how out of character this is for him.  I suppose anything's worth a try with The Most Not Going To Happen Thing Ever, but that still doesn't justify five minutes of crap jokes even the other characters don't laugh at.  The whole thing is just awkwardly weird.

Mercifully, the one Davrossy minion actually out looking for the Doctor (a man made of snakes, because why not) finally checks the one bit of the universe left on his list and whisks our heroes to Skaro.  Skaro is invisible now, which seems terribly important until everybody can see it and then nobody mentions the invisible thing again.  Okay, spotting a pattern yet?  They come up with big or kooky stuff – invisible planet, mines that look like hands – and they just go pfft.  Wouldn't it be nice to take an interesting idea and actually get something out of it?

"We have acquired the TARDIS."
"Good work!  Pity you couldn't have told us sooner.
You could have saved Snakey a lot of bother."

And oh bother, I've skipped a few.  Backing up to Big Idea #3, then: on Earth, planes are stopping in the sky.  Wow!  What's that got to do with Davros?  Answer: nowt, it's just so Missy can get UNIT (and Clara's) attention.  Oh.  This feels like a random idea from Steven Moffat's bag of leftovers, but they at least get an eyebrow-raise out of it before glibly consigning it to the dustbin.  UNIT, too, as all any of this is for is bundling Missy into the story.  So long, Kate.  Nice to see you, Roz from Bugs.  Totally worth filming those scenes.

Oh, and Missy's back.  Woo.  Nope, still don't have a problem with a female Master (although I do have a problem with giving her a special "female" name), and yep, Michelle Gomez can be hugely entertaining, but the character's still written with such drunkenly broad strokes that she'd slot right into Moffat's ever-more-prophetic Who spoof, The Curse Of Fatal Death.  Every line is aimed directly at Tumblr.  "Traps are my flirting."  "He keeps trying to kill me, it's sort of our texting."  "I'm murdering a Dalek, I'm a Time Lady, it's our golf."  Ehhhh.

Look, we all know Moffat needs to fire a wisecrack every other second or we might not love him any more, but it's just so wearying to be relentlessly quirked and funnied at for forty minutes.  Missy pretty much exists just for teh proverbial lols.  The only thing that makes her interesting is the love/hate relationship with the Doctor – and be fair, this was already trope-tastic when Roger Delgado first started shrinking people – but in Moffat's hands that's as much of a dog's dinner as the plot.  Last time we saw Missy, she was a psycho and the Doctor hated her.  This time, she's still a psycho and the Doctor likes her.  Even Clara seemingly gets over the you-killed-my-boyfriend bit well enough to exchange witty banter, because nothing must stand in the way of banter.  It's all very zingy, but it isn't really character development.  It's ping-pong.

Oh, and I've missed another bit: Clara's here too, if it isn't too much bloody trouble for her to actually join the Doctor sometimes, and she pulls all the right companion-y expressions and does banter – but mostly she just helps Missy to be in the story as well.  They're both just... in it as well.  Neither of them makes a meaningful dent until the cliff-hanger, where they're (apparently) killed off, along with the TARDIS.  (!)  But even Moffat knows you won't swallow that one, so the real cliff-hanger is something else entirely: the Doctor rushing back in time in the TARDIS (*cough* TARDIS?!  You had one job, Steven!) to (apparently) kill Davros as a child.  Which is about as likely as the Doctor dropping dead of a heart attack, and is confusingly kind of like the nasty thing he already did at the start, but at least it gets us back to what these episodes are about.  Cue The Witch's Familiar, or Part Two, or The One Where They Get On With It.

The Doctor abandoned Davros, ergo he's guilty.  And hey, remember Genesis Of The Daleks?  Don't worry, there's a clip: Tom Baker says if you knew a child would grow up to do terrible things, could you kill him?  And if you did, are you any better than the monster he became?  It's not really something that needed exploring literally, as that's already what Genesis was about, but fair enough, let's go there.  And I tend to think it's a waste of time pointing an accusing finger at the Doctor, especially if the person doing the pointing is a genocidal nutbag with absolutely no moral high-ground, but we're trying to find something new to say about said nutbag, so that's good.  Is Davros really all that bad?  Is the Doctor, given all that he's done, a saint?  It's kind of amazing we're still going there after last year's "Am I a good man" conundrum (yes he is, what do I win?  Oh you're going to keep asking), but maybe these episodes will put a new spin on it.

If you've made it this far, you've probably guessed it's a "no" from me.  And right you are.

Okay, Daleks – time for the 2010-redesign ultra blurry cameo!

The Doctor's done questionable things.  He blows up armies of Daleks all the time, and sometimes he's just flat-out mean.  But there's still a fat stack of difference between that and Davros.  Daleks as well: they love to wave an accusing tentacle and say "You would make a good Dalek" or somesuch, but he just wouldn't, okay?  When he blows stuff up and kills things, it's always because the stuff and the things want to blow up everything else.  Do you have any better ideas?  And if he's grown to hate Daleks and Davros after all that, well, he's got a pretty good reason to feel that way, hasn't he?  With the exterminating and the absolutely-nothing-else they get up to?  It's like Jaws.  Brodie, Quint and Hooper aren't just some jerks picking on an innocent fish.  The fish keeps eating people.

Nevertheless, Dalek Hitler asks "Am I a good man?"  I don't even.  I mean the answer would be a resounding "no", wouldn't it, even if there wasn't a line of dialogue expressly telling us this whole routine, with the moral tirade and the change of heart and the I-want-to-feel-the-sun-on-my-face-one-last-time, is a load of bobbins.  "Be subtle, Colony Sarff.  Tonight we entrap the Time Lord."  All the confessions, all the tears – don't worry about it.  Why put that in there?  Yes, Davros turning over a new leaf is the mother of hard sells, but if you're going to sidle up to the camera and say "Psst, not really!" beforehand, why even bother?

So Davros is as much of a nutbag post-episode as he was before.  Quelle surprise.  What of the Doctor?  I mean, how could he abandon a child on a battlefield?  What a bastard, right?  Well, the more you think about it, the more complicated it is.  The Doctor is on Skaro by accident.  (Dum de dum, trying not to question that...)  His first instinct is to help the child, of course.  But then he finds out it's Davros, an enemy whose personal history he doesn't know.  What does he do?  Wade in and rescue him?  If it goes wrong, Davros might die and change history.  If it works, perhaps it'll turn out the deadly handmines are what crippled him, and not leaving him there will change history.  Perhaps Davros was always meant to struggle out of there alone – in at least one version of the timeline, he must have done.  (And if the Doctor always rescued him, as he inevitably does in the end, Davros wouldn't be mad at him.)  On the face of it, it's shameful, but when you try to apply a little Time Lord logic it's nowhere near as clear cut.  Walking away is cruel, but it might be right.  This, by the way, was exactly why Tom Baker was asking "Do I have the right" in the first place – because time is complex.  In any case, Davros survived, and he's done a lot worse to others since then.  It's a pot-kettle-palooza. 

Still, perhaps the Doctor isn't as fussed as he makes out.  He's quite hysterical to begin with, begging Davros to spare his friends, but once Clara and Missy are zapped he's more than happy to turf him out of his chair.  Where's all this enormous guilt, and this apparent certainty of death?  Is one reminder of what Davros and Daleks are actually like – Surprise!  They'll kill your friends! – enough to get rid of all that?  And when he triumphantly pulls a Curse Of Fatal Death-esque "Naturally I anticipated" on Davros's plan, switching it around to blow the Daleks up yet again (and probably take out Davros as well), it becomes alarmingly possible that both the Doctor and Davros have been trolling each other the whole time.  At which point these episodes are saying nothing substantial about anything.  Davros?  Hates everyone, exterminate.  The Doctor?  Hates Daleks, tick, boom.  Yes, it's wonderful that he goes back and rescues Lil' Davros after all, teaching him about mercy and affecting him even minutely for the better.  He's still going to blow up his house with him and all his kids in it.

"Oh, the unbearable guilt!"
*kicks disabled guy out of wheelchair, makes Dodgems joke*

Meanwhile, Missy and Clara survive via some teleport jiggery-pokery, and I'll take a moment to say: glad they explained that.  The little cutaway with Capaldi engineering his own escape in a similar fashion is loadsa fun.  Peter Capaldi is, in general, more to my liking in these episodes than he was last year.  Have I just got used to him, or has there been a retooling?  Hmm.  He's still crotchety, but fundamentally he's a lot sweeter and sillier.  Capaldi from last year wouldn't have given Davros five minutes, let alone a burst of regeneration energy.  Okay, some of this is deliberate out-of-characterness brought on from thinking he's going to die (nope, still don't buy it), and some of it's fake, but whatever it is, it falls within my personal Doctor limits.  He even makes a few of the jokes work.  Even when he can't, it's a pleasure just to listen to Peter Capaldi, his voice lilting between gruff Scots, posh Scots and the occasional funny English accent for no particular reason.  I'll always miss Matt, but I'm happily on the Capaldi Train this year.

I can't seem to focus on Missy or Clara.  Do they really achieve very much?  They mostly loiter in the Dalek sewers (where all the not-dead Daleks end up, because apparently Daleks can't die, which is news to all those dead and self-destructed ones over the years), occasionally commenting on the Doctor's actions (curiously broadcast over a loud speaker) and confirm that he really is acting like he's expecting to die.  (He still might!  Honest!)  Missy is having her own Davros-ish moral back and forth this week, or that's what they seem to be aiming at: a moment where she mentions her daughter, a general attitude of helping the Doctor a bit.  No?  But then she confirms in The Magician's Apprentice that she hasn't "turned good", so it's surely no surprise when she (more than once) betrays Clara and the Doctor, essentially just for the trollols.  It's the Master – what were you expecting?  There's a line about how none of us are really all your friend or all your enemy, but actually, Missy and Davros are clearly not the Doctor's friends, and Clara clearly is, so... that doesn't really work.  (Mind you, they seem to be hinting at some dreadful hybrid prophecy thingie, and harkening back to when we first met Jenna Coleman in a Dalek casing, so god knows where they're going with that.  Shall we save time and assume nowhere?)

On a first viewing, when it isn't painfully obvious how pointless it all is, these episodes waste about 50% of their time but pick up a bit after that.  Julian Bleach continues his good-but-not-revelatory job with Davros – no offence, Julian, but it's difficult to give proper kudos when we've no reason to buy the mono-optical one's sudden transformation, and as for all the ranting and raving, welcome to every Davros ever.  But his scenes with Capaldi are the obvious highlight, pointless or otherwise.  It's two good actors shooting the breeze.  I'll take it.

Phew – so glad they explained this.
And how Davros survived blowing up in Series Four.
Oh.  Um.  Maybe next time?

Let's see, what else: you get to see loads of old Daleks again, only this time you can actually see them, which is an unfettered delight.  How I've missed the little grey ones!  (We're still ignoring the "new" Daleks from 2010, which is quite the multi-coloured elephant in the room.)  There are some amusing insights into how Daleks work, from the questionably potty (Dalek sewers) to the sort-of-makes-sense-actually (saying "Exterminate" is their way of reloading).  Missy might be a misbegotten waste of effort, but Michelle Gomez still puts the effort in; wouldn't it be nice if she had a really nuanced script that relied less on jokes?  Capaldi we've already covered – take away the crap jokes and he's great – and while I don't feel anything at all for Clara besides "Oh, you're back then", Jenna Coleman certainly does all the requisite companiony stuff.  She even cries.  Good job?

These episodes are big and flashy.  Stick your fingers in your ears and they might appear thoughtful.  Don't do that and, well, they're hollow and worse, they're typical.  Ten to go.  Let's hope they can do better.

PS: Sonic sunglasses.  No comment.

The Bookcase Of Fear #9: Redshirts by John Scalzi

Redshirts
By John Scalzi

Here's an example of not judging a book by its cover.  Glance at the artwork or the blurb for John Scalzi's Redshirts and you'll see a sci-fi spoof – and you know what, let's call a spade a spade.  It's a Star Trek spoof.  Very much in the vein of Galaxy Quest, it's clearly aimed at the tropes and conventions of everyone's favourite space exploration show, making a particular bugaboo of those hapless extras who tend to die for idiotic reasons.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  Goodness knows there are plenty of conventions and clichés to choose from, and why not make a book about those unfortunately mortal joes?  There are laughs to be had.

For a while Redshirts goes after the gag, savagely mocking the illogical and unsafe away missions that plague your average episode of Star Trek.  And it's funny, but also kind of limiting.  Spoofs are tough to maintain, just as satire makes it difficult to tell a good story.  The more you remind us of something we are familiar with, and/or point out how silly it is, the further we feel from the characters as people, the harder it is for the story to say anything for itself.  It's just a satire.  Nobody loves Airplane! for its plot.

Fortunately, John Scalzi – who I'd never heard of pre-Redshirts – has numerous tricks up his sleeve.  The joke evolves.  It's not just about how silly it is that people die in certain ways and at certain times, but how other characters deal with it, whether they even notice it, and just why it keeps happening.  Before long, Redshirts is working on a whole other level of meta self-awareness, and rather than loiter cheerily in Star Trek's allegorical shadow, it highlights the comparison.  And... that's about as far as I can go describing the plot before I get into spoilers.  Incidentally, thank you, the people who designed the cover and wrote the blurb, leaving Redshirts looking like Star Trek Spoof 101.  I was not expecting it to go where it went, so I was pleasantly shocked when it did.

There is a downside to this.  Some people may dismiss Redshirts as a spoof.  If they do, they'll miss a complex and funny story which celebrates (and mourns) the life of small and unsung characters, and ponders what we can learn from them.  It has dizzying things to say about creativity, writing and life – all of which is supported by an extensive knowledge of sci-fi silliness that will make Star Trek fans chortle, but that's still just the hook.  It was the book's heart and mind games that made a lasting impression on me.

Do I have any complaints?  Well, it's quite short, but then that might be another way of saying "it's voraciously readable".  I've spent longer, and had less fun with thinner books.  Oh, but here's an annoying niggle: those redshirts in Star Trek tended to be the security guys.  That's why they always went on away missions and why they always barrelled into danger.  They were literally protecting the main characters.  It's not universally true of every episode, and they were still written as blundering suicidal oafs, but it's still a basic piece of internal Trek logic that people love to ignore or forget.  (See also, Captain Kirk's grossly exaggerated libido, which thankfully does not appear in any shape or form here.)  It's a shame to devote all that energy to the minutiae of sci-fi and still miss that detail.

Nonetheless, Redshirts is hugely enjoyable and rewarding.  A creative, thoughtful and while-he's-at-it hilarious piece of work.  You should read it!

Mr Mercedes
By Stephen King

A retired cop with drink and dark thoughts for company.  A one-time killer he never caught, determined to drive him to suicide, and maybe to resume old habits as well.  Both men are hunting the other.

I'm sure Stephen King would agree his book has something in common with... too many hunt-the-killer thrillers to mention, actually.  Mr Mercedes is such a textbook example of "cat-and-mouse" that the cop and killer even share the same initials.  I'm forcibly reminded of a line from Adaptation: "You explore the notion that cop and criminal are really two aspects of the same person.  See every cop movie ever made for other examples of this."  And we know King reads and watches other examples, because his heroic ex-cop likes to list them and point out the inaccuracies – always within the shadow of Dirty Harry, or what have you.

Still, the race to catch "the Mercedes Killer" is an exciting one, despite (or maybe because of) King's craving for giving us information ahead of time.  Even writing it in present tense (possibly to add flavour to what is, for King, a new genre after all) does not alleviate the random spurts of future info that have plagued his novels since Carrie.  Perhaps it's a Hitchcockian device, showing us the bomb under the carriage.  It certainly adds tension, but sometimes we're talking about a lead time of a couple of pages, and sometimes it simply removes the tension.  Sometimes I want to say: Stephen, just let me get there.  The present tense doesn't add a great deal; I stopped noticing it after a while.  Chopping between Bill (cop) and Brady (killer) gives the thing an atmosphere.  It is as unpleasant as you would expect to inhabit the killer's mind.

I'm not sure the catch-him-even-though-he-won't-do-it-again aspect was really utilised (as per the blurb: he'll do it again), but perhaps that wouldn't have been as exciting a story.  And while it's limiting to think of King as a horror author, this brand of fiction (although compelling) is a little limiting too, since there's arguably less call for imagination in the characters.  Certainly these ones.  You could whip up Bill Hodges from any cop movie ever, and Brady's psychosis is altogether garden variety.  (Take one young mega-misanthrope, add Oedipal frosting.)  A scene where he's haunted by his younger brother comes reassuringly close to horror territory, but it's not one of many.

Elsewhere, King's frequent pre-occupation with sex rears its head – sigh – but his concerning fascination with racial stereotypes is the novel's loudest bum note.  Jerome, a brilliant and articulate young [black] man, insists on adopting an old-timey persona called "Tyrone".  He's a racist caricature, no one in the book finds him funny and it doesn't add anything at all to the story.  I have no idea why it's here and I winced every single time.  It's one of those things an author might defend as "more of a reflection on racism", but he's still a white guy writing a black guy that says "massa", so uh, no, it should go.  Of course it should.  It was published in 2013, for god's sake.

I often find myself listing complaints even when I've enjoyed a book.  For good measure, yes, I enjoyed Mr Mercedes, but it's plot-driven and there's really not a lot to say when it works – it's a thriller, it can be quite thrilling.  King's back-and-forth narrative is a fun setup, even if the novel's e-mail correspondence conceit, like Brady's initial taunting promise never to do it again, ultimately falls under the steamroller of Hunt The Killer Thriller, there to reap familiar rewards.

11.22.63
By Stephen King

There's something inevitable about 11.22.63.  (And before we get started, the title sucks.  Say it out loud.  Catchy it ain't.)  The genre-guzzling Stephen King was bound to do a time travel story eventually, and his fascination with Americana leaves the Kennedy assassination looking like 2001's monolith.  It's really no surprise that he's had this in mind for years.  However, the wound was a little too fresh in 1972, and he was busy at the time, so we got it in 2011.

It's a pity he waited, as "Go back and save Kennedy" is an idea I've heard a few times.  Quantum Leap spent three miserable episodes on it, Red Dwarf went there, Doctor Who tipped the wink...  Where time travel is concerned it's simply a hard one to miss.  11.22.63 must do a memorable job, and maybe avoid the pitfalls of time travel fiction along the way.  It does a goodish job of both, for the most part.

The early pace is so fast, it's more like a novella than (oh boy) a 740-page King brick.  Shortly after you've met him, schoolteacher Jake Epping discovers a time portal in the back of a diner.  The owner is dying, and he has a plan to impart.  You already know what that is, so why mince words?  This kind of succinctness is missed during the book's chunky midsection.  It's rarely dull, but there is a lot of it.

And it's mostly exciting.  Jake averts a few other disasters before that big day in Dallas, turning 11.22.63 into a sort of epic Groundhog Day.  (Which is okay, I adore that movie.)  Plus he falls in love – how could he stay here and not? – which is where the book plants roots and puts on weight.  He must juggle two lives, teaching and living in a small town and carrying out you-know-what in Dallas.  Both feel like novels in themselves, and that's after a few hundred pages in Derry, the It place.  (Yes, it's exciting to remember that story, and there's yet another novel's worth of good stuff to be had there, but the further you get from this bit the more out of place it seems.  He really squeezed in an It sequel?  Oh well, I guess in 1958 it was too good to pass up.)  The characters are not his richest or best, but it's difficult to invest all that time and not care about them.  You'll get to know Lee Harvey Oswald pretty well.

There are plenty of heart-in-your-throat moments, but Jake marks time between them, either compiling research on Oswald or worrying away at Sadie's (his girlfriend's) past.  The latter indulges the author's love for the era; the former is where his deep research is most obvious.  (Authors suffer in research, and misery loves company.)  That's a fat stack of waiting, although there's plenty of colour too.  Momentum builds and pays off, and you will race through the last hundred pages, at least until the ending comes along.

I won't spoil it, but in a story like this the ending is always going to be a make-or-breaker.  (There's that inevitability again.)  In my case, we're talking break-like-a-TV-out-of-a-high-window.  Okay, semi-spoiler: it's a bad ending, an almost apologetic, bubble-bursting, effort-wasting Twilight Zone switcheroo that has really, really been done before.  It casts a shadow over everything that came before, all 700 research-filled do-it-all-again pages of it, and I wish it didn't.  The only reason I can think of is that it's "inevitable" – a time travel story just has to go there, right?

But y'know what?  There's no such thing as time travel.  All the "rules" are arbitrary, made up, they vary from writer to writer, or they should.  I'd be more surprised and certainly more satisfied if we avoided, say, a lesson on the Butterfly Effect.  Because we've heard it.  Jake is a savvy narrator, he strikes off all sorts of outcomes just as they occur to you – so why ultimately go for one that's just as obvious, and while we're at it, super lame?  Just what's so wrong with having your cake and eating it?  If you've seen the movie Frequency, or obviously Back To The Future, you'll know how good it can be.  We expect that time will take its grim toll, because that's how life is and how so many stories end.  We come to you, Mr Writer, for the unexpected.

It's just too bad.  With a strict editor and a serious talking-to about what it all means and where it's going, this could have been The Great JFK Time Travel Novel.  Instead it's an exhilarating wait for a terrible punchline; a regrettable choice that, thanks to our humdrum linear world, nobody can go back and fix.

Doctor Who

Interference

Book Two: Hour Of The Geek

By Lawrence Miles

There isn’t much I can say about Interference: Book Two that I didn’t already say about Interference: Book One, since it is merely the next 300 pages of the same book, but here goes.

Lawrence Miles continues to confuse “ideas” with “story”.  Banging on endlessly about his evil Faction Paradox (or are they!) and his vaguely technology-satirising aliens, the Remote, and what both of them stand for and what they want out of life, is not a substitute for narrative.  The sheer misery of following their exploits is not something that needed to span two books.  It might not be so bad if the ideas themselves were more interesting, but they just didn’t grab me the way they obviously do the author.  Right now, I don’t ever want to hear the words “remote”, “media” or “signals” again.  600 pages of it.  Good god.

But it’s not all about faction this and signal that: there are characters in here too.  Sarah Jane continues to entertain the most, along with her Ogron pal, but the modern Doctor-and-companion bunch (the, er, main characters) fare less well.  The Doctor’s out of prison at least, but what took him so long?  Sam finally says goodbye, and maybe it’s because I haven’t read all the books with her in, but it didn’t make much of an impression.  Fitz gets up to some depressing nonsense on the sidelines – Fitz who? – and the guest cast are a pine forest, including the no-you-must-be-joking next companion.  Meet Compassion: a person so stunningly unscintillating, Miles might as well pass a bomb to the other writers in this series.  Good luck, folks.

Events finally return to the Third Doctor, and they do pick up a bit, as Miles clearly has a soft spot for that incarnation.  (Conversely, the younger Sarah Jane is reduced to frowning in the background.)  There are some very neat ideas here – although that’s not always a good thing, see above – and Doctor Who history gets memorably changed.  Spoiler alert: Jon Pertwee has an entirely new death scene.  Not a bad idea in theory (and it somehow doesn’t affect the rest of the TV series), but it’s only there to set up events for the Eighth Doctor which – and I can hardly believe this – haven’t happened yet.  Tune in next week?  You must be joking.

Interference is a big gamble, and it doesn’t pay off.  Simply put, despite a few bright spots, this is one boring book for the price of two.

This Time It's War

Doctor Who
The Time Of Angels and Flesh And Stone
Series Five, Episodes Four and Five


How much do you like the Weeping Angels?  Most Doctor Who fans like them a whole heck of a lot – even the rumoured "normal" folk seem to have heard of them – and Steven Moffat knows this, so he does the logical thing.  Give them what they want.  Which is Weeping Angels by the busload.  Probably.

There are 6 billion colonists on this planet.
Why are the Weeping Angels starving in a cave?

The result is the Who equivalent of Aliens, minus the gore.  Seriously: take a small, terrifying story (Alien, or Blink), then make it a great big action movie.  There's atmosphere (and Angels) by the busload, and it doesn't try to be the same as Blink.  This is a whomping great two-parter with guns and armies, not a creepy timey-wimey tale set in a house.  It's very exciting.  However, with all due respect to not repeating yourself, some of what worked about Blink is rather missed.

We open in showy-offy, Steven Moffaty style, ping-ponging back and forth across 12,000 years.  River Song (pre her Library death) is investigating a spaceship's cargo.  She summons the Doctor to rescue her from certain death, and follows the Byzantium until it crashes on an alien world.

How incredibly flashy is that for a pre-titles teaser?  River is, admittedly, rather annoying: showing up the Doctor's TARDIS-flying skills is about as Mary Sue as it gets, but Matt Smith sells the awkwardness and curiosity of the situation, and does a wonderful impression of the TARDIS noise into the bargain.  With the arrival of Father Octavian and his army of clerics (less lame than they sound), River is kept from going into full Smug Mode by the constant threat of having her sordid past revealed.  It's one of her better episodes as it keeps her reluctantly in check; slightly fearful characters are more interesting than Me So Perfect ones.

So, the ship was carrying a Weeping Angel.  It caused the crash, now it's escaped and they must recapture it.  There's a real atmosphere here, as we build up the threat of the Angels by reputation.  A bit like Aliens (you don't say!), or the TNG episode The Best Of Both Worlds, it's a while before you actually see them, so we spend that time imagining the worst.  Soon we're in some caves, so that's dark places and stuff moving in the corner of your eye.  All very snazzy and well-directed.  Little do they realise there's an entire army of Angels here – they were, um, too busy recharging to attack... seems legit – and before you know it, the hunt for an Angel becomes a race to the flight deck of the Byzantium.  It's curiously not as big on plot as you might expect from Moffat, but it's an exciting ride.

Besides, there's some cool plotty stuff.  I've already mentioned the opening – any excuse to show off the cleverness of time travel is worth a punt – and even better, this year's arc plays an unexpectedly significant part.  Remember the crack in Amy's wall, which also appeared on the Starship UK and in Churchill's bunker?  Now it's on the Byzantium, attracting the Angels and causing all sorts of havoc.  It's a seriously canny move to take something you're expecting to see in the finale and plonk it in Episode Five, and it keeps the story from just being an exciting dash from A to B.  The crack adds a whole other layer of threat: people getting "unwritten" – although that detracts massively from the Angels, who are as frightened of it as everyone else.  Anyway, it serves as a handy way to get rid of the Angels (turn off the gravity, the crack gobbles them up) as well as a snazzy recall of the opening scene, with River getting sucked into space.  That's very nice work.

There are some brilliant blobs of Matt Smith here – definitely lots for him to work with.  He's irritable, awkward and occasionally angry around River; heroic, then heartbroken around the clerics; cocky and furious against the Angels; and genuinely affectionate towards Amy.  There's a wonderful bit where he refuses to leave her behind (despite her puzzlingly selfless insistence to the contrary – seriously, Amy?), and bites her hand to snap her out of a trance.  Even better, there's a clearly arc-hinty scene where he returns to give her some mysterious words of comfort.  (Spot the reappearing jacket!)  All in all you'd need a spotters's guide to know it was Matt Smith's first episode; he's instantly brilliant.  It's also a good one for Amy, once she gets past generic wide-eyed excitement and Girl Power camaraderie with River.  (Nope, not buying it.)  She has a lovely chemistry with Matt.

Oh no, he's got him by the throat!  He's... touching his throat.
And his hand.  Why not send him back in time?  Is he on a diet?

Of course, what you're really here for (apart from The Doctor And River: Round #2) is the army of Weeping Angels.  And that's arguably where these episodes fall down, or at the very least, ominously wobble.

Like any good horror movie monster, there are rules.  They can't move when you're looking at them; when they do, it's incredibly fast.  When they touch you, you go back in time and they feed on the time energy.  It's all a bit abstract, and the "send you back in time" bit has a soft edge (because their victims tend to get married and live happily ever after – aww!), but it's still incredibly effective, because it's simple.  Don't blink!  They.  Will.  Get.  You.

Perhaps in an effort to keep things fresh and interesting – because things were getting stale and boring, I guess? – The Time Of Angels fiddles about with all that.  Now, instead of sending you back in time, they snap your neck.  Instead of feeding on time energy, they feed on radiation at a crash site.  They still want to kill you, but it's less about survival – which is terrifying because it's only natural and you can't reason with it – and more about good old fashioned, rather boring, evil.  They even "reconstruct the cerebral cortex" of a victim so they can call the Doctor and mock, upset and generally rile him.  That's a bit desperate and attention-seeky, isn't it?  Kind of like a Dalek trolling the Doctor's Facebook page?  (It's also suspiciously reminiscent of the "data ghosts" from Silence In The Library.)  Why on earth would they bother?  They were much more mysterious and scary when they didn't say anything.

They're adding all sorts of stuff to their repertoire here, which dilutes those precious rules even further.  "That which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel," apparently.  So take a photo or a video clip and it's going to climb out of the frame and get you.  That's a nifty idea for kids, who are going to get even further away from their televisions as a result, but it strikes cynical old me as trying to fix something that ain't broke.  Weren't the Angels scary enough without adding photo Angels?  And didn't Sally Sparrow take a few pictures of them with no apparent consequences?  (I checked.  She did.)  They also have a new thing about looking into your eyes, which allows them to get inside your head.  Okay, but don't they generally want to avoid eye contact?  Why do they need all this climb-inside-your-head gubbins if all they want to do is feed on your time energy?  Why don't they seem bothered about that any more?

If all the Angels are unwritten, what happens to all the Applans they killed?
Do they come back?  What happens to the 6 billion humans who moved in afterwards?

They seem to do a lot of things here just because.  After "infecting" Amy, the Angels make her count down slowly from 10.  When she reaches zero, an Angel will come out, presumably killing her.  Okay, this is effectively sinister and body horror-y, but when the Doctor presses them on it (during one of Angel Bob's regular "Nyer nyer!" phone calls), it turns out they're only doing the countdown for kicks.  So... it's pointless.  Just how petty and bored are these guys?  The Doctor's solution is to "save up" the remaining countdown by closing Amy's eyes.  If the countdown's a joke, though, why would that do anything do stop them?  Later, he has the even more frown-inducing idea of making Amy walk past them with her eyes closed.  She's in no immediate danger because "they'll assume you can see them."  Bloody hell, so they're stupid now?  Didn't we just establish they have a whole thing about eye contact?  Presumably they know when you're not looking at them, or they'd never be able to move!  And the Doctor explains that Amy is faking nice and loud over the radio.  Christ.  So they can't hear you now?

There's some absolutely needless buggering about with the rules here, and when they're being transparently evil, petty or stupid, "scary" just gets further and further away.  Still, logic doesn't always get in the way of simple effectiveness.  When the Angels finally cotton on to Amy's bluff, they begin to move.  I know this is stupid – River helpfully reminds us that every Angel is "a statue when you see it", which means they're something completely different when you can't see them, I can't stress this enough, they are not moving statues.  I know, I know, but this bit still reduces me to quivering hysterics.  It's seriously well-directed.  Maybe that's it: direct something well enough and it won't matter how stupid it is.

When the dust has settled and River has dropped a few more portentous hints about her future with the Doctor, he takes Amy home so she can reveal her big, weddingy secret.  This is a nice moment, at least until Amy reveals her intention of a one-nighter with the Doctor.  This scene is, um, a bit of a mix?  Matt Smith is wonderful, giving about as Doctorly a response as you could hope for: baffled, grossed out, finally worried.  What it does to Amy, and poor old Karen Gillan, is less good.  We are supposed to like Amy, yes?  She's the companion, our stand-in.  Throwing in a largely unprovoked attempt to bonk the Doctor A) on the night of her wedding and B) with no intention of a relationship afterwards is just... ick.  She already seemed scatty and impulsive before, but this pushes her into downright horrible.  Yes, they've obviously Doing A Thing here that will pay off in the subsequent episode, but we're meant to follow this character's emotional state – the point of a companion is largely that their emotions are easier to read than the Doctor's – and going from a near-death experience to wanting to shag your imaginary friend during your extended pre-wedding night is just an ugly mess.  Take it away.

All done shuddering?  Right.  Action movie, thrill ride, roller coaster – choose your analogy or cliché.  These episodes are (apart from that dodgy last scene and the generous plot holes) very flashy and a bit clever, though ultimately they're far more exciting than thought-provoking.  And... that's okay once in a while.  Really, this is a solid and entertaining two-parter.  But the attempts to reinvent the wheel are wholly unnecessary.  The Angels worked fine.  If you're bored of them, Steve, just don't use them.

Filmflam: Frozen

Frozen
Directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee
2013

Y'know what?  It's a boring title.  Thanks a lot, Tangled.

If you're alive and live in the world, you've probably seen Frozen.  Then again, I suspect even those few who haven't seen it, thanks to the prohibitive DVD availability within cave systems and under rocks, are aware of it.  Who can escape?  Frozen is everywhere, and it's on everything.  You know that song?  Yeah, you do.  And isn't it delightful that Let It Go manages to be both enormously popular and, as a titular piece of advice, totally ignored by all.

I hate Frozen.  Oh god, someone make it die.

It's tempting to hate such monumentally popular movies simply because they are annoyingly ubiquitous – even if I just sort of liked it, I'd still be utterly sick of hearing about it now – but no, it's actually more than that.  I find Frozen unenjoyable for a host of (I think, entirely legitimate) reasons.  In a nutshell, though, it's just not a well told story.  Disney have done better.

It's no secret that the story has been heavily rewritten since its origins as The Snow Queen, and not just in changing Elsa from a baddie to a goodie – more on that later, re Hans.  The trouble is, the rewriting shows.  It’s full of random, unsupported ideas.  Elsa has ice powers.  Why?  No reason.  And nobody else has any powers.  Just… ice powers out of nowhere.  Then, when she accidentally zaps her sister, her parents take her to some magic trolls.  Huh?  Magic whatnow?  These guys literally only exist so characters can visit them to cure magic ailments, caused by equally random magic powers from nowhere.  None of it means anything.

(Quick sidenote: remember Tangled?  That movie hinges on a character having magic powers, and although the explanation is entirely driven by fairytale logic – a drop of sunlight lands on a flower, flower cures mother, mother has baby – they at least explain how Rapunzel ended up with it.  From the start, Tangled puts more thought into its plot than Frozen.  Also, we don't get to know their parents at all, other than their dad gives THE WORST ADVICE IMAGINABLE to his guilt-ridden daughter.  If you want a story of orphans where the parents' absence is actually felt, you'd be better off with Lilo & Stitch.  And hey, you want female empowerment, you got Mulan.)

Now, they do try to make a point about troll magic, and what it can and can’t do – specifically, you can’t change “the heart” as easily as “the head”.  This makes poetic sense: somebody’s heart, aka the way they feel about others, is who and what they are.  You can’t change that with ease, whereas minds (facts, opinions) are more malleable.  Clearly this is a “frozen heart” in the metaphorical sense: a cold, evil heart that needs thawing.  So Elsa's heart, right?  Since she's the one with the ice powers?  Apparently not: we’re talking literally about a frozen heart (Anna's) which has nothing to do with the person's feelings.  Anna isn’t cold emotionally.  She still loves Elsa even when she’s dying, and the act of freezing her heart was an accident anyway.  So there is nothing intrinsically impossible about fixing her heart – it’s just impossible for the trolls to do so because the plot requires this.

No problem, though, because an act of “true love” will save her.  Yes, it’s the love-between-two-sisters bit which everyone adores.  No, I don’t have a problem with the story revolving around that, rather than a romantic love story of which we’ve seen umpteen.  But the act of true love that saves Anna is… from Anna, to Elsa.  Er, Anna consistently loved Elsa throughout the movie.  Even when she had brain damage, she loved Elsa.  Even when Elsa zapped her in the heart, she loved Elsa.  This is not character development.  OBVIOUSLY ANNA LOVES ELSA, so what kind of huge, emotional change is that?  It’s right there from the start!

The person who should really be going on an emotional journey is, of course, Elsa.  But most of her journey is already dealt with in Let It Go, where she’s finally able to be proud and happy and insert-pleasing-subtext-here.  (Before promptly settling back down in her Fortress Of Solitude to sulk some more.  Um, yay?)  Even she doesn’t have to learn to love her sister in the course of the movie, though – it’s because she loves her so much, and doesn’t want her to get hurt, that she was so repressed and dangerous in the fricking first place.  OBVIOUSLY ELSA LOVES ANNA TOO.  So the journey of the movie is simply that she needs to fine-tune her random X-Men powers.  Do excuse me, I must have something in my eye.  Sniff.

"Olaf, you're melting!"
"Some people are worth melting for."
They're desperately trying to find an act of true love.  Why doesn't this count?

Instead of putting Arendelle into an eternal winter because of jealousy or wickedness, or y’know, for any actual reason, she’s now doing it out of simple incompetence – like Anna’s frozen heart, a major plot point from The Snow Queen no longer means anything.  The script even manages to muddy the whole issue of “eternal winter”, since the passage of time is such a rush.  Anna starts talking about how Elsa has banished summer, but it’s been a matter of days.  And anyway, the movie is set in a location full of ice, cold and blue from the start – the first song is about ice sellers, the second about snowmen! – so the weight of Elsa’s “eternal winter” being against the norm is never really felt.  And so what?  Elsa does a whole song where she learns to control her magic mojo.  Why not just keep trying?  It's not like she has anything else to do.  And yet, despite "letting it go" and being all with the smirking self-actualisation, when it comes to actually doing something to solve the situation, Elsa is pointlessly reticent.  It's like the song didn't happen.

And none of this is my least favourite bit.  Making the Snow Queen a misunderstood goodie is what Disney are all about nowadays – just look at Maleficent.  But as with that movie, this just means somebody else has to be the bad guy, and they’re going to be an outright jerk whether it makes sense or not.  Just try to follow poor old Hans as he goes from “traditional Disney love interest” to “hugely concerned about the welfare of Arendelle” to “saves Elsa’s life” to “wants to usurp Elsa’s throne”, and finally to “wants Elsa and her sister dead”.  This guy plainly was not the bad guy when they started making the movie.

Let’s skip past all the “genuinely seems quite nice” stuff, because we’re retroactively meant to think it’s all an act.  (Yeah, right.)  He wants to marry into the throne (because he’s thirteenth in line in the Southern Isles), and he was “getting nowhere” with Elsa, so he focuses on Anna.  Okay.  (Except the day he met Anna is the first time he was ever likely to meet Anna or Elsa, so he’s surely only been at this for a couple of hours.  Jeez, Hans, it’s only your first day.)  He ingratiates himself with Anna and is left in charge of Arendelle.  Good work: all he needs to do now is marry Anna and do away with Elsa.  Great!  Except – d’oh! – he saves Elsa’s life, which is the opposite of helpful.  Okay, no matter, he can kill her later, just get on with marrying Anna, right?  Except – d’oh! – now she’s dying, so he tells her he doesn’t love her and plans to murder Elsa, then leaves Anna to die and tells everyone else she’s dead.  Uh… dude, you forgot the “marrying into power” bit?  You’re literally just some guy Anna liked who held the fort when she went for a walk.

We lose the traditional female villain, and viva la difference, but only at the cost of hastily rewriting a minor character into the same position.  It doesn’t gel at all, unless you want to believe he’s an utter moron.

Okay, there's more.  I'm not a fan of the animation – it's all so uniformly blue-and-white, the faces are so bland, I just get tired of looking at it.  I much preferred the songs, and the general musical style of Tangled.  I want to punch Olaf in his monotonously chirpy guts.  Kristoff adds virtually nothing to the story.  (Apart from a randomly coincidental link with Anna, Elsa and the trolls that is never acknowledged.)  I hate the way Frozen sneers at Disney tropes like love-at-first-sight, then has Anna and Kristoff get together after a normal-amount-of-time-for-a-Disney-movie.  I hate the way everybody raves about Elsa's super-strong un-Disney-like female empowerment while being totally okay with Anna the stereotypical clutz.  (And forgetting they already made kickass movies like Mulan.)  The tortured-magic-power plot worked better in Tangled.  The tale of two orphan sisters worked better in Lilo & Stitch.  I hate Frozen.

But hey, it’s been two years.  Time to let it... well, you know.  At least there's a chance Frozen 2 might be an original screenplay, rather than an established fairytale with severe identity and script problems.  But something tells me there will be Frozen 2 stationary and toilet roll holders regardless.

Unnecessary Redesign Of The Daleks

Doctor Who
Victory Of The Daleks
Series Five, Episode Three


The new Doctor vs. the Daleks.  What could go wrong?  As it turns out, quite a lot.

For starters, they forget to dress all the sets.

Okay, think positive.  I like that it's about a small group of Daleks, and not another Finale Army.  I like that it's set during the Second World War, because Daleks are stand-ins for Nazis and the two things just go together.  (Seriously, how right do they look zooming around the Blitz?)  I like the khaki-Daleks.  I like that when the Doctor arrives, answering a distress call from Winston Churchill, the Daleks pretend to be helpful.  There's a definite Power Of The Daleks vibe there, and even a direct reference with the "I am your soldier" line.  Nice.  (In case you're wondering, Power Of The Daleks is one of the best Dalek stories, but it's missing from the archives.  I guess if you're going to pinch an idea, it might as well be one you can't go back and watch.)

I also like some of the things it tries to do.  Pitting the Doctor against Daleks who've changed their ways is interesting.  How will he react?  Can he cope with Daleks that don't want to take over the universe?  Is he happier when they're shooting at him?  And later, when they show their true colours (all too literally), I like the attempt to make the Daleks bigger and badder.  In theory.  As Steven Moffat loves to reiterate, the Daleks are the most reliably defeatable baddies in the cosmos.  How can we change that?  I think that's a fair question, and a fair basis for a story.

Of course, that's all it is: a basis for a story.  You do need to add a few things, like a plot and some compelling characters.  All of that's missing.  Victory Of The Daleks is like someone scribbled a brief for an episode – WW2, Winston Churchill, Daleks, redesign them at the end – and put that straight into production.

Take the setting.  I read an interview with Mark Gatiss before this aired, and he seemed really interested in this time period.  He recounted grisly tales of death in the Blitz, and of people suffering all sorts of hardships.  Obviously Doctor Who won't go too into detail about it, but we've had a compelling World War Two episode before, so we know they can do it.  Victory Of The Daleks, on the other hand, is the laziest, join-the-dotsiest recreation of Blitz-era Britain you could imagine.  Here is a version of Winston Churchill who is never without a cigar, and rarely opens his mouth except to a) chew cigar or b) spout a catchphrase.  "Action this day!"  "We'll give 'em what for!"  "Keep buggering on!"  Does he come with a pull-string?  The supporting cast are just as bad; there's an ARP warden on the roof who yells "Put that light out!" and (urgh) "Do yer worst, Adolf!"  Later they put up a Union Jack and all nod patriotically at it.  This is a cartoon.  For historical flavour, you'd be genuinely better off watching Dad's Army.

Come to think of it, Dad's Army had better plots.  Take this "pretend to be helpful" business.  It's creepy and reference-y and a bit funny as well.  ("WOULD YOU LIKE SOME TEEEEA?" is not something you'd ever expect a Dalek to say.)  But after a grand total of 12 minutes, they chuck it in the bin.  Now, I doubt anyone watching this honestly believed that a) the Daleks have turned over a new leaf, or b) they really are just some unrelated robots that happen to look like Daleks.  But the tension isn't about whether their story is true – it's about What Are They Really Up To.  All the stuff with the bloke who thinks he invented them is intriguing enough.  Why are we in such a hurry to find out the truth?  In the paltry time allotted, all that "pretending" stuff amounts to is the Doctor saying "Oh yes you are" until they agree with him.  Well, that was easy.  And pointless, once we find out what their "plan" was.

Good thing he hasn't got post-regenerative amnesia.

Okay, so they've got a Progenitor, aka a thing that makes Daleks.  It won't work because their DNA isn't Daleky enough any more.  Don't panic!  It will work if they get the Doctor to confirm that they are, in fact, Daleks.  They decide the best way to achieve this is to build a robot scientist and make him believe he invented them, and go around saying they are not Daleks, but Ironsides.  (This is after the ending of The Beast Below, when Winston Churchill summons the Doctor before he starts believing they're Ironsides.  Uhh... script editor?)  They then cross their tentacles and hope the Doctor will turn up, at which point he will probably say the magic words.  Simple!  Oh, wrong word.  I meant "bollocks".

A machine that won't recognise Daleks, with the sink plungers and everything, but will accept the testimony (and recognise the voice of) the Doctor is bollocks – they haven't even met this version of the Doctor yet, so it's not like they've got his voice print.  Making a robot scientist who thinks he invented them is bollocks – what's it actually for, and why not just act like Daleks and wait for the inevitable wheezing, groaning sound that came every other time?  Filling the robo-scientist with memories is bollocks, not to mention dangerous – why not just remote control him, since he's a bleedin' robot?  Pretending to be helpful, and pretending they're not really Daleks at all is bollocks – if they're at all convincing, no one will summon the Doctor in the first place.  Really, if you're the sort of idiot who builds a machine that will accept the word of a stranger over a set of Dalek bumps and a sink plunger, perhaps extinction isn't such a bad idea.  Worst Dalek Plan Ever?

With the magic words uttered, the episode loses its selling point, and it's a prompt toboggan-ride downhill from there.  The Daleks rush off to hit CTRL+P on their Progenitor, the Doctor follows and holds them to ransom with a pretend TARDIS self-destruct.  Then... they tell him all their plans.  And he tells them he's not going to let them get away with it.  And it's dead boring.  Much of this episode rests on Matt Smith, who's obviously very watchable, but he's working with hopelessly dry stuff like "They are my oldest and deadliest enemies", "I've defeated you time and time again!" and "I won't let you get away this time!"  His inimitable stamp is missing, crushed by a script that reads like a bad Target novelisation.  It's Exposition Of The Daleks.

And then we get to the real reason for this episode: new Daleks!  New toys!  A new lease of life!  What a pity they look bloody ridiculous.  Now you mention it, the Daleks looked fine.  It was, and is a perfect design – ain't broke, doesn't need fixing.  Tweak them if you must (bronze works, khaki look great), but making them bigger, and colour-coding them like Power Rangers?  Not so necessary.  They're the most reliably defeatable baddies in the universe, and that's not going to change because all of sudden they're colour-coded.  Why not put more effort into their stories, since that's where they were lacking?  No change there, sadly, but now they look like comically oversized toys.  And then they run away.  That's seriously all we've been building up to here: the Daleks want a new batch, they get one, the end.  Oi, Mark!  You forgot to write a plot!

Our various heroes attempt to stop them, of course, which leads to some fighty-shooty-special-effectsy stuff that isn't a substitute for a plot.  The Daleks have turned on all the lights in London, which makes it a target for the Luftwaffe.  Oh no!  Luckily the robotic Bracewell has lots of useful ideas and isn't under Dalek control because um, so he outfits some Spitfires to go into space (good thing the Daleks made him able to do that!), they shoot at the Dalek ship, the Doctor... helps a bit?  And the Daleks decide that's enough, and reveal that Bracewell is also a bomb!  (Okay, so he is under their control now?)  If the Doctor doesn't tell the Spitfires to go away, they'll explode the Earth!  And the Doctor agrees, even though they're obviously going to do it anyway because they're Daleks, which lets all the air out of that Impossible Choice.  (Seriously, Doctor Who is terrible at those.)  It's a succession of silly stuff pulled out of thin air.  And it ain't over yet.

"This will pick up Dalek transmissions!"
Er, why are they transmitting anything?  Who to?  There's only one ship!

How do you disarm a bomb that's also a robot that thinks it's a man?  (No, you can't pop him in the TARDIS and throw him into a black hole, you nasty person!)  Why, by talking to it, of course!  The Doctor appeals to Bracewell's (fake) memories in an effort to convince him he's human.  Amy, using her super-companion powers and the fact that they're both Scottish (or rather, one of them is), reminds him of a girl he loved, which works a bit better.  Presto, the bomb deactivates.

I say "presto", because I don't know why the bomb deactivates.  He's a bomb.  He can cry all he likes, and think he's remembering stuff (though he isn't) – what's that got to do with going tick, tick, boom?  I wonder where the Daleks got all those memories from, why Bracewell was built with a Power Of Love failsafe, and why bombs always need a countdown and never just blow up.  Anyway, magically disarmed, he sits up and casually announces the Daleks have buggered off.  The Doctor gives an impotent little shout and then gets over it.  The whole thing is almost too limp and wiffly for words.

Then there's an extra Happy Ending where the Doctor and Amy let Bracewell roam free to meet up with his girlfriend.  All very cutesy-pooh, or it would be if a) he wasn't still carrying a massive world-destroying bomb in his chest and b) those were actually his memories, you pair of complete morons.  How did that get past a first draft?  And why are we doing cutesy-pooh stuff in a Dalek episode?  Doesn't it sort of shmoo-ify the tone, and make the Daleks look even naffer by proxy?  Isn't that exactly the sort of thing re-inventing the Daleks is supposed to put a stop to, for smeg's sake?!

And that's Victory Of The Daleks.  They came, they progenated, they still can't shoot straight, they left again.  One popular piece of criticism is that they should have made it two episodes instead of one, which always makes me laugh.  There isn't enough plot for one episode.  At times it feels like an unimpressive first act, setting up the bit where we find out what they were really after, which then makes sense of this first, noticeably crap bit.  Spoiler alert: no, this really is it.  For future reference, if you've come up with a new design and you want to show it off, hold a press conference.  Save the episodes for when there are stories to put in them.